Another date symbol, altered only slightly from the previous one.
It seems Captain LaSein has additional secrets the Shareholders would prefer buried. I met with Prince Cotnoir today to raise my concerns regarding the timing and publicity of her trial. He was not receptive, but as he understands my concerns to be related to his own safety, he did share with me the reason for his beliefs.
This is, according to the Prince, the third time that Euphonia LaSein has emerged with her life from a massacre, each one very costly to the Federation. The second was, of course, the incident with Ignigoet, but the first predated it by nearly twenty years, well before my time, indeed before any of the present Shareholders had reached their current positions. LaSein was only a child, but it was then that her father, Arman LaSein, was put on trial for unlawful magical experimentation.
The crime is familiar to me: I have known Riverwalkers to occasionally develop an unhealthy interest in the occult, and I have personally presided over investigations into those uncommon cases of mages acquiring an interest in the dissection and other subjection of human specimens in their research. The penalty for such actions is of course death, and this was precisely that prescribed for Arman. According to the records, he was executed in the third week of the harvest, nearly forty years ago. I was aware of this conclusion, aware as well that Captain LaSein’s military career was no doubt stunted by her inauspicious parentage. I did not hold it against her. What I did not realize was the extent to which the former Shareholders had been able to obscure the true narrative of Arman LaSein’s execution.
The Prince was in the audience on the day of the old mage’s hanging, had been brought there by his own father, and all seemed to go according to plan until the moment the block was kicked from under LaSein’s feet. As he dangled there, the Prince told me, Arman LaSein did not kick, did not thrash, indeed, did not die. He simply stared with “eyes like coal” upon the crowd, and as he did, the hangman, the guards and magistrates, all in attendance who facilitated the execution fell to their knees and died with rope-marks about their necks. Amid the screams, the Prince did not see what became of LaSein, but when the commotion finally settled, the old man was gone.
It is his opinion that a pattern has emerged, and the danger posed by Euphonia LaSein’s continued citizenship in Thago is greater than any possible threat she may profess regarding the defeat of her float.
I do not know if I agree with him–I feel that Captain LaSein’s account still merits preventative action–but it does not appear the point is negotiable. Even so, I am far, far more concerned by the fruits of my visit to the records office following my appointment with the Prince. I sought to glean background on his story in a report on the precise crimes of Arman LaSein, but my eye was taken by sketch of the man appended to the main document. I have seen this man before, in the LaSein estate, barely a week ago. I mistook him for the butler.
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